Looking back on my career in the Army, I have to say I am so thankful for it all. I feel like the Army and I had a square deal- I have given the Army everything that I had and the Army has given me tremendous opportunities and experiences. They took a kid with a 2.7 GPA who didn’t have much going for him all the way to West Point and Harvard grad school. I was given the opportunity to serve and fight for my country, which I will always feel fantastic about doing. Now, do I want my children to join the Army? My answer is a definitive, “No!”
Let me explain. I look at it this way- life in the Army is hard. You move around a lot, you’re gone away from your family a lot, you take extreme risks that could end up killing you. I bore all those burdens for them so I could make something of myself, climb the socioeconomic ladder, and give them a good life, and in many ways, a privileged life. I did all this for them so they won’t have to. It is my dream for them to grow up and serve their community or country in other, safer ways with less hardship.
As for my plans moving forward, I figured out what I would like to do with the rest of my life while I was attending Harvard Business School- I’d like to buy a small business in a small town and run it for my employees. I believe the way we think about running businesses and profit sharing in this country is fundamentally flawed and I would like to be different. I’m hopeful for where that vision will take me and us as a family.
I leave my fellow Americans with this message: Instead of thanking me and other military members for our service, instead, please be civic-minded and responsible citizens. When you are willing to fight and die for something, you would like that thing to live up to the ideals that you thought it stood for in the first place. It seems to me that everyone joins the Army for different reasons, but most of us end up staying because of the people around us in the Army. I can’t help but feel that if my soldiers are, on average, great people and worth everything I give up for them, and they are a microcosm of this country, then the logical conclusion is that the average American citizen is worth that as well.
From what I see in this country, I am not convinced that we are living up to this notion. People are people are people, right? We all have good things about us and we all have bad things about us. Let’s just embrace that fact and try to bring out the good in each other and start acting like people who are worth sacrificing for.
